‘Pacific Rim’ Animated Series Will Bridge The Feature Films

While I’m sure most of you are as excited as I am that Guillermo del Toro is going to be getting both a ‘Pacific Rim 2‘ and ‘Pacific Rim‘ animated series, you’re probably a little annoyed that the sequel film isn’t scheduled to be released until April 7th, 2017. The series itself doesn’t have a release date scheduled, but in a recent interview with Collider, del Toro shared a lot of details about it and where it might be heading.

First, here’s what he said about the premise of the animated series:

“What’s great is it’s a great set-up and a link between the first movie and the second movie. It really enhances the mythology of the characters; we have cameos of characters from the first movie, but mostly it’s a new set of characters. New jaegers, except for one or two, [and] new kaijus. It’s really fun.”

Del Toro then went into what we should expect to see in the 13 episode series:

“We’re going for a long arc, so the idea is to show a group of characters—we have pilots, functional jaegers, but we have all these younger characters. I really want to explore things that are complimentary to the things that I want to explore in the second movie: drift, what drifting does to you, what is needed to drift, a lot of stuff that I think is important, but also the jaeger technology, the kaijus being evolved, ideas about the precursors—the guys that control the kaijus. We have a lot of leeway in 13 episodes and I wanna make it sort of in the same spirit of Pacific Rim, which is the ideal audience for Pacific Rim was young—very young, 11-year-olds and so forth—but with really beautiful design and stories that make these characters interesting in a way that I found them interesting in, for example, Year Zero, the graphic novel that we did. And I think that’s the basic thrust of the thing.”

Considering long term television is what I find addicting and episodic bores me, this is great news! I know that is a personal preference but for those of you who love something more narrative in nature, you should be happy to hear this. Del Toro then went into what the style of the series will be like:

“If it connects we’ll go on [to more seasons], but the thing is I don’t want it to be weekly adventures. I don’t want it to be like Chapter One is a little action thing and it gets resolved in 40 minutes or an hour and then the next episode, [it’s like] nothing happened. My favorite anime series always have a long arc.”

While it isn’t specifically said to be anime, would anyone be surprised with how clearly anime influenced the film was? You also may wonder who would be involved and where would it air? Sadly we don’t find out much on that quite yet…

“Legendary is talking to a few outlets so I’d rather not disclose myself. The way we set up The Strain was to talk to everyone, literally, on the map, and then find who’s response we sort of jibe with the most. I think in this series, it would be great to find a place that can give it a proper presentation and can advertise the creation of the series. So we’re open to being pleasantly surprised everywhere.”

Are you looking forward to an animated series on ‘Pacific Rim’? What network do you think would be best positioned to air what will clearly be a not for kids animated show? Share your thoughts below!

Stuart Conover

Stuart Conover is a father, husband, blogger, published author, geek, entrepreneur, editor of Horror Tree, horror fanatic, science fiction junkie, lives in a world of comics, and a casual gamer (all of this when his wife lets him of course.) He fell in love with science fiction and horror at the same time while watching the movie Alien at probably far too young of an age while still being extremely impressionable and has been happily obsessed with both since! Around the same time he had also developed an unhealthy addiction to comic books that continues to this day!